Protests, prayer outside Zimmerman jury during day of deliberations

In a crowd of shouting protesters and TV cameras, Daytona Beach pastor Monzell Ford thought he'd get everyone to stop for a second and pray.

ANDREW GANTSTAFF WRITER

SANFORD – Outside the courthouse here on Saturday morning, Daytona Beach pastor Monzell Ford thought he'd get everyone to stop for a second and pray.He didn't finish his prayer amid a crowd of protesters and TV cameras before the shouting took over again."There's a lot of hate right now. Frustration right now. There's a lot of pain right now,” Ford said Saturday morning in Sanford, hours before a jury acquitted George Zimmerman of second-degree murder. “Confusion on both sides. We have people crying out, ‘Justice!' ”“Justice for George!” a man's voice yelled.Ford kept on. “…This is a time that we can unite right now, to come together, for one reason and one reason only. One reason, and what's that?” (Prayer, he hoped they'd say.)“Justice for Trayvon!” a woman's voice yelled.“Justice for George Zimmerman!” the man yelled back.A chant started, then got louder. “What do we want? Justice! For who? Trayvon!” Ford tried again to pray for peace. But another voice in the crowd was already telling the Zimmerman supporter: “Go back to the hole you crawled out of.”That scene opened the second day of waiting for a Zimmerman verdict outside the Seminole County Criminal Justice Center in Sanford, where heated arguments -- on race, on the justice system, on gun rights and other often-divisive issues – escalated as opposing sides mixed.Seminole County sheriff's deputies, posted around the perimeter of a “free speech zone” in the courtyard, separated two people arguing in the afternoon. No punches were thrown and no one was arrested.The courtyard, split down the middle by temporary metal fencing, divided Zimmerman supporters and the demonstrators demanding his murder conviction. But the sides mixed freely.HLN's Jane Velez-Mitchell walked by. Later, Geraldo Rivera.Not everyone was fighting, and occasional harmonica and banjo playing filtered through some of the noise.A Trayvon Martin demonstrator crossed the divide and yelled to his friends, “Take my picture with the Zimmerman people!”Even Casey David Kole Sr., the man yelling “Justice for George!” during Ford's prayer, eventually took a photo with a woman on the Trayvon side and jokingly asked if she was married.One man, 51-year-old David Turner of Sanford, painted himself half black and stood between the sides: “I'm neutral,” he said. “That's why I'm standing here in the middle.”A young man who identified himself only as Malcolm X was roaming the courtyard challenging others to debate: “Zimmerman's whole story relies on the fact that the young black male is a criminal,” he said.When the crowds chanted “Justice for Trayvon,” Malcolm X shouted back: “Justice for the black man in America, not just Trayvon! It's going to happen again even if he does get justice!”The chants evolved. One became: “It's neighborhood watch, not neighborhood kill!” Then: “Trayvon didn't have to die; we all know the reason why!”Zimmerman supporters held signs: “We Love You George.” “Not Guilty.” “George Got Hit, You Must Acquit.”A group of young people who arrived shortly after 9:30 a.m. and demonstrated all day promised protests around the country if the jury returned anything other than a guilty verdict for second-degree murder.The pastor Ford, who said he was in Los Angeles during rioting after the 1992 acquittal of several police officers charged with beating Rodney King, hoped those protests would be peaceful.“I don't want to see that again,” he said. “Not here, not in Miami, not in L.A.”“We're trying to keep it peaceful. It's not about race,” said William Memola, 52, of Orlando. “If he's not guilty, there's going to be no peace. Listen to them. They're chanting, ‘No justice, no peace!' That's a threat … Down south, it's never going to change. I don't know why.”Staff Writer Katie Kustura contributed to this report.

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